


Vickeriedoo

by burglebezzlement



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Background torture, Canon-Universe Coffee Shop, Demons, Gen, Spoilers through s3e1, The Bad Place, The Craft of Acting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-08 09:05:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16426442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Vicky meets with an old friend from Neighborhood 12358W, and gets a new direction in unlife.





	Vickeriedoo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ChokolatteJedi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/gifts).



The coffee shop is crowded. There’s only three seats in the entire place, all tall, backless stools along a narrow window ledge. One demon sits in the middle, working on a laptop, his belongings covering the other two seats. The rest of the space is dominated by the line of humans waiting for the bathroom and the espresso making equipment, which steams ominously as the demon barista behind the bar pulls Vicky’s triple doppio antimatter.

Vicky looks around approvingly. She hasn’t been to the Quadrant of Eternal Torment for a while, but this place is top-notch. Pevita clearly knows what she’s doing. 

Vicky’s not sure why Pevita is the one she’s kept in touch with, out of all of the demons involved in Michael’s disaster. Maybe because Vicky saw, sometimes, that Pevita could feel what they were doing there. That she had learned a taste for the human soul in emotional torment, so much sweeter than the simple physical pain that seemed to be all your average demon on the street could comprehend. 

Or maybe it’s because they both hate Jessica, that Shawn-kissing snitch.

The barista calls out _Varcky_ , and Vicky grabs her drink before selecting a stool, picking up the belongings of the demon at the window ledge, dumping them on the floor, and sitting down.

When Pevita arrives, forty-five minutes late, she sits down on the other stool, on top of the demon’s laptop bag. “SO sorry,” she coos, “you know how the Infernal Rail is.” She leans forward, shouting around the demon between them. “It’s been ages!”

“Darling,” Vicky shouts back. “SO wonderful to see you. When was it last? The dive bar on the Sea of Pain?”

“No, no, that was ages ago,” Pevita shrieks. They keep yelling until the demon in the middle gives up, passive-aggressively yanking his laptop bag and nearly unseating Pevita as he goes.

“Do you want anything?” Vicky asks, waving a hand at the pastry case and its assortment of chalky scones and vegan croissants. 

“Oh, I never drink antimatter,” Pevita says airily. “But it’s so sweet that you still do, darling.”

They trade insults for a while, but dominating the only chairs in the shop grows stale quickly.

Vicky’s the one who brings up Michael’s disaster. She always is. Pevita says she should be moving on, opening her horizons up to new and innovative tortures. 

Of course Pevita would say that. She hasn’t been blacklisted by Shawn. She’s got a role in the new emotional torture programme, the one Shawn can’t cancel without admitting that Neighborhood 12358W was an unmitigated disaster. She’s torturing humans in ways Vicky can only dream about.

“So how’s your little job?” Pevita asks.

Vicky’s an actress, and she has pride, so she grits her human suit’s teeth and smiles wide, like she really does love torturing dodgy knock-off eyeshadow palette promoters. “Wonderful. You’re so kind to ask.”

“There’s news at HQ,” Pevita says, delicately, leaning in. “I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

“They’ve got the humans back?” Vicky sits up, antimatter sloshing in the cup in her hand. “Really?”

“Not quite,” Pevita says. “They’ve found them. On Earth.”

Vicky’s eyes go wide. “How?”

“The Judge.” Pevita shakes her head, like she disapproves, but Vicky knows she lives for this sort of gossip. “Michael’s been intervening. Word is, Shawn’s sending Trevor to try to break their little group up again.”

“Trevor?” Vicky’s back goes stiff. “Trevor? That hacky fraud? That talentless waste of protein and water? His acting is terrible. He’ll never be able to pull this off.”

Pevita’s lips curve. “I thought you should hear it from me, darling.” She turns to the window and checks her lipstick, grimaces at the sight of her puny human teeth, and then turns back to Vicky and leans in. “Strictly _entre nous_ , I don’t think Trevor’s going to be able to get the Australian accent down.”

“Australia?”

Vicky feels the blood-carrying tubes in her face pounding with the beat of her worthless human suit’s heart. Trevor’s a hack, but seeing Shawn promote him over her — that wasn’t a surprise. The Bad Place has always run on nepotism, favoritism, and all the other best isms. It’s nothing new.

But sending him to Australia — 

“Oi should be going instead,” Vicky says, in her flawless Australian accent. (Her “Aussie” accent. She’s gone so far into character, she knows these little bits of “Aussie” slang, which is the difference between a top-notch acting experience and a hack. A hack like Trevor.) “That wallaby-banger’s going to screw the roo on this one, mate.”

Pevita pouts. “Oh, poor darling. I’m so sorry.”

Vicky ignores that. She knows perfectly well why Pevita wanted to be the one to break the news. The delight of emotional torture — most demons might be too unevolved to understand, but Pevita gets it. 

Vicky gets it, too. It’s why she was written up at work last week, and never mind that she had that day’s eyeshadow guru torture victim sobbing on the ground, wailing with pain over the memories she’d dredged up about his past. Just because his red, blurry, painful eyes weren’t caused by having eyeshadow pans filled with rat faeces and dead insects crammed into his eyeballs, suddenly Vicky’s “not doing her job” and “not being a team player.”

It’s so _short-sighted_.

Behind them, the espresso machine explodes, sending shards of jagged metal and boiling antimatter onto the humans waiting in the endless bathroom line.

Vicky hardly notices. She’s too busy thinking.

Trevor is a hack. He’s going to fail, and when he does, Vicky’s going to be there, ready to take over.

She has no chance of convincing Shawn to send her. She knows that. It’s probably why Pevita told her all of this — to relish the look on Vicky’s face when she realizes that Shawn’s given Trevor the part of a lifetime, among the actual humans.

No matter. Pevita’s always played by the rules. It’s why she has a job with Shawn’s new programme, but it also means she isn’t willing to do what it takes.

If there’s a way for Trevor to get to Earth, there’s a way for Vicky. She just has to find it. 

“So good to see you,” Pevita says, and Vicky leans in for the cheek kiss. Her mind’s working furiously, finding a way around.

A way Down Under.


End file.
